Unusual for most personal comments I will talk about the status of the author of this work Mujaki a friend of the author told the community that he died around a month ago fighting cancer
His loss was a great loss to fanfic community as a whole communuty in my opinion as this fanfic work of his shows he is a great writer
I just wish to say Scriv wherever you are now I hope you are in a better place may you rest in peace excelsior!.
Words: 394k+
Link: https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/18234
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/with-great-power-one-must-go-further-beyond-marvel-mha-alt-power-aka-power-plus-ultra.1010628/
https://archiveofourown.org/works/38642925/chapters/96604650
(Peter Parker was born with a dangerous mutant power that he hates and fears. It may be the only thing he hates more than himself.)
Part 1 (ARC 1: Morlocks)
Because I have an overactive muse that doesn't know when to stop, I ended up writing this thing. The main story threads will be identical to the SB thread, but there may be QQ appropriate omakes along the way.
With Great Power One Must Go Further Beyond (Marvel/MHA alt power)
aka Power Plus Ultra
By Scriviner
Part 1:
There were times when he could still see the moment when things changed.
Or at least how he thought the events played out.
In truth, everything had happened so fast and so quietly that he wasn't sure that he hadn't imagined everything that he thought he remembered.
It happened on the field trip.
That much wasn't in dispute.
He'd been excited. The jocks, as usual, had given him shit for being happy, because it was in their very nature to piss on his whole life, but it wasn't just being able to go to Osborn Pharmaceuticals that had piqued his interest. It had been the chance to be out of the classroom.
Away from school.
Away from everything.
He chose to linger close to the end of the line, not wanting to call attention to himself as he simply enjoyed following the student tour group as they had meandered through the facility. He'd considered a career in a place like this. Chemistry, much like everything else academic, had come easy to him. Biochem shouldn't be that hard to pick up, he mused. He had read so far ahead that he imagined he could probably teach better than his teachers could. Maybe.
It was actually an effort to not fall asleep in class most days. He'd already prepared all the assignments for the rest of the year and was simply counting time til graduation happened. He supposed if he pushed for it, he could've asked to skip a year or two. That would get him away from the idiot jocks, but he expected that college would just be more of the same. Only he'd get it worse for being younger than everyone else.
Not worth the hassle or the effort at the end of the day. Not really.
Those had been his thoughts. He had been lost in them. He'd remembered that he'd been thinking those same thoughts when it had happened.
The spider.
He hadn't seen it, but he could just imagine how it had lowered itself on a thread.
Slow and stealthy, despite being a brilliant red and blue.
Someone could have seen it, should have seen it.
In his mind's eye he could swear that he had seen it as a flash of blue and red releasing its thread.
He couldn't have.
No one saw it drop down and land on the girl next to him.
He didn't know her name. Truthfully, he really hadn't bothered to learn the names of any of his classmates beyond the ones who had hassled him. Those he'd taken great care to remember. It was something he'd promised himself for later.
But the girl whom he hadn't known and who, by pure and complete chance, had just been next to him.
And in that moment, a spider - the spider - landed on her.
The girl flinched as she felt it and the movement must've startled the spider in question, which then reacted as a spider is apt to do.
She screamed when it had bitten her and she'd flailed, swiping at the side of her neck where it had landed. She moved gracelessly and heedlessly, panicked either at the pinprick on her neck or from the unnerving sensation of the little beast still squirming beneath her fingers., Moments upon moments, and in that hair's breadth she stumbled… right into him.
That was the moment everything had gone completely wrong.
The moment that had sealed his fate.
She'd gotten tangled up in her own feet. Then into his feet, and they had both gone down, bodies and foreheads smacking before hitting the ground.
Some part of him would have reveled at the thought of actually making contact with any female form, much less a genuinely cute girl at that, but in that moment he'd been too busy being caught completely off-guard and he had panicked when he lost his footing.
That part of him had wondered, Was this what getting swept off your feet is supposed to be like? I don't think I like it.
Some other, smaller part of him, however, had been certain that the entire misfortune had been somehow engineered by the jocks to be some further humiliation, however unlikely it would have been to his rational mind. That the girl had been one of their patsies, bribed with a chance to hang out with the cool kids in exchange for messing with him.
Unlikely. Illogical.
But the bullies' behavior had always struck him as illogical.
But that small part of him was angry and it burned. That fire, that momentary spark of anger and resentment blossomed into something new. Something unexpected.
His hands couldn't find anything to hold on to as he had fallen.
But this new, unexpected thing had reached out and grabbed hold.
The girl gasped. Something that was starting to take hold within her, was abruptly ripped away at the root.
He felt it torn from her and settled within him.
They both screamed.
Peter jolted awake, a process that shot him upright in a sweeping arc that sent him from entirely horizontal to entirely vertical in a split second.
He clamped down and kept his jaws shut to stop the screaming from his dreams to come out in real life, the muscles of his neck standing out like cords as he smothered his own voice until he felt it die away. He didn't want the cops getting called down on him. Not that it really mattered in this neighborhood; police response time in this part of town was measured in days.
The cardboard boxes he'd had on top of him to keep the snow off and hide him from view had torn apart from frantic awakening. That's annoying, he frowned, what a waste.
Peter had finally gotten them just the right amount of flexibility that they'd draped over him properly without being too stiff in the chilly winter air.
And it was chilly, every breath sending wisps of fog misting around him. He could feel the cold, but it didn't bother or even hurt him. That was perhaps the strangest thing of all to emerge from the incident; most things nowadays couldn't hurt him when he had the power active. Peter had tried many, many things and the few things that did manage to actually leave any damage tended to heal quickly.
I'll bet they'd heal even faster if I used-
Peter shuddered, pushing that thought down. It wasn't something he really wanted to deal with in the wee hours of the morning in a dirty, frozen alley.
Or at any time, really.
Peter scrubbed a gloved hand down his face, letting the rough, scratchy wool scrape across his skin and force out the lingering fatigue. He didn't really need much sleep, not these days. More precisely, he could forgo it for extended periods, but he would still get tired eventually.
Especially if he didn't sustain himself.
The problem was boredom. What good was the ability to stay awake for a week at a time when there wasn't anything to do in the middle of the night? It wasn't like he could go into a bar, not at his age. Hanging out at 24 hour convenience stores usually got him harsh looks from the clerks. The libraries were closed.
Taking a nap seemed like a better way to spend his time than endlessly wandering the streets of Manhattan until the break of dawn. It wasn't like he had anywhere else to be, so this part of New York City was as good as anywhere else.
Or at least anywhere else that was still New York. It's not like I'm going to wander over and squat in Jersey, that's just a bridge too far.
That bridge being the George Washington Bridge.
He made himself laugh a little at that tiny joke.
There wasn't a lot to laugh about either these days, but he did what he could to keep his spirits up.
He had to.
Something strange, a tingle crawled up the back of his neck, and he frowned as his senses narrowed down on what exactly had stirred him from sleep.
It hadn't just been the dream that had woken him up.
The power that kept the cold away and made him strong also had other parts to it. Parts he didn't like to think about, but they were part of the package. That included a particular sense for things. It wasn't quite detecting life per se. It was a sort of sense for things of a predatory nature. He could sense potential prey (for lack of a better term) near him.
He could also sense when someone was trying to prey on him.
Like right now.
Someone was watching him. He could feel their eyes on him even though he couldn't see anyone.
Peter took a deep breath, letting the power sharpen his senses. Although there really wasn't much to smell beyond the alley itself and the sharp, cold tang of a New York Winter, there was something distinctive nearby. Musty and pungent. An unwashed body, but not one that had spent the whole night out in the cold.
It smelled wet. Something from somewhere warmer and more humid than a dinky alley in upper Manhattan.
He looked towards the alley's mouth, the tingle growing into full blown itching as his thoughts raced. The alley itself was a dead end and anyone else would have been trapped.
But he had other options.
Peter called out, "Who's there?", cursing himself mentally as his voice cracked, his already ruddy skin flushing an even brighter shade of red.
So much for being intimidating.
Puberty was humiliatingly cruel.
A hand covered in a ragged, black glove was held up, poking into view at the alley's entrance.
"Friend!" A wheezing, sing-song voice replied. "Caliban is friend!
"Really." Peter's reply was flat and deadpan, but the self-declared Caliban seemed to take that as encouragement.
"Yes, really!" Caliban said, nerves at the edge of his voice as he stepped into view. He was a tall, gangly figure, wearing multiple layers of clothes to ward off the cold. The outermost layer seemed to be a hideously purple velvet suit coat and pants, both of which were badly torn and frayed at the cuffs. His shoes were cherry red boots that, in contrast to the rest of his bedraggled attire, were freshly shined and clearly well maintained. He had on an ugly beanie with an incongruously large pom pom on the top, pulled low on his head and covering his ears. Between that and a black scarf wrapped about his neck, everything bit of him was neatly covered up save his eyes and a narrow strip of skin, but that was enough for Peter to note that there was something odd about him.
Caliban's eyes themselves were protuberant, almost grotesquely large compared to the rest of him and there was barely any pupil, only the tiny black pinprick of an iris in jaundiced yellow sclera. The skin around those eyes was also extremely pale. Not any normal skin tone Peter had ever seen, but a bloodless, chalk white.
"Then what makes you a friend?" Peter asked. He couldn't sense any other presences, but wandering up to someone at ass o'clock in the morning and declaring yourself a friend wasn't exactly something normal people did.
"Caliban knows where it's warm and out of the wind." Caliban said, walking gingerly towards Peter.
"And what would this place cost?" Peter said, unable to keep suspicion out of his voice.
"Nothing!" Caliban declared, eyes crinkling at the corners as if he were smiling beneath the scarf. "That is what makes it a friend's offer."
"Nothing's ever free."
"It is!" The pale man pressed on. "Caliban sees you in his mind's eye. Shining and true. You are like Caliban! Those like us are allowed in!"
"And what is Caliban that we're 'alike'?" Peter said his voice dipping into sarcasm, "Did you figure out I'm Jewish? Or left handed? Mensa member? Which is it?"
Caliban laughed. "No, no. You're one of us, so you can get through the door. Anything more than that needs a willingness to work, but right now, getting inside and out of the cold seems like it might be what you need most. Is Caliban wrong?"
"How do you know I'm 'one of you'?" Peter said with a glare. "What even are you?"
Caliban reached up and untied the scarf, tugging it down to reveal more of his face. The pale, bloodless complexion was consistent through all the revealed skin. His nose was almost non-existent, a tiny, upturned thing that might have been cute on a different face. The rest of his features were gaunt to the point of making his visible face a living skull, with prominent cheekbones and a square jaw stretching his skin to the point of transparency.
"We… are same." Caliban insisted.
"Buddy, I'm not sure if you've looked in the mirror lately, but we're definitely not the same." Peter replied carefully. He'd seen some things in his young life. Odd things to be sure. This wasn't even enough to break into his top five.
Caliban shook his head, "No, no. Caliban is not good at this." He gave Peter a pout, his gaunt face and massive eyes making the expression comical. "Caliban is different from everyone else. You are also different. But same in being different!"
Peter stared at him, still trying to parse those statements.
Caliban tapped the side of his head through the beanie. "Caliban knows when people are different like him. Like others. Sense them in his heart and mind. Like you!"
Peter frowned, mulling over the tall man's words before he fit the pieces together. "You can sense people who are different."
"Yes." Caliban nodded, thinking he was getting through to Peter.
Peter clenched a fist, prompting his knuckles to crack loudly. "I've already had run-ins with others who find 'special' people." His voice had gone harsh and cold. Even colder than the night air. "I've already had to deal with someone like that."
He allowed a bit more of the power to seep into his eyes, causing them to glow red.
Caliban took a step back, frowning slightly. "Not like a bad finding. I told you. I am offering sanctuary. A place for those like us."
"Others?" Peter asked slowly, letting the power settle back down, the glow in his eyes subsiding.
Caliban nodded enthusiastically. "There are others, like Caliban. In a safe place. A warm place."
Peter continued to look at him suspiciously. "That sounds almost too good to be true.
"You know, most people are just happy to be offered a warm place with friends." Caliban sighed.
Peter shrugged. "The cold doesn't bother me that much."
Caliban shook his head, rewrapping himself in the scarf. "Well, Caliban is freezing. You follow if you wish." With that, the gaunt, pale man turned on his heel and walked around the corner and out of sight.
Peter knew, intellectually, that staying in this one particular stinking alley was the better option. The sense of being prey was fading fast as Caliban was no longer focused on him and seemed to have concerned himself more with getting to his so-called 'warm place with friends'.
Peter was aware that following the strange man was a bad idea.
That didn't change the fact that he started walking after him, because sometimes curiosity won out over caution and the possibility of getting jumped by a freaky street gang seemed like a more interesting prospect than another few hours spent trying to get back to sleep in the snow.
Peter all but glided across the snow covered pavement, easily catching up to the other man who had pulled out a Nokia cell phone.; the type of old-fashioned brick of a phone that could take a severe beating and keep going.
In some cases, it could be used to give someone a severe beating and keep working just fine afterwards.
Peter quirked an eyebrow as Caliban held up one gloved finger at him in a universal gesture to 'hold on' as he spoke into the phone. "Yes, Caliban is aware what time it is."
Peter could hear the susurrus of the other voice, too indistinct from the phone's tinny speaker for him to make it out.
"Caliban is not the asshole. You are the asshole." Caliban snorted.
The voice from the other end seemed to complain more, but Caliban shook his head and replied. "Because you are already awake anyway and it is a five mile walk to the nearest entrance."
Caliban rolled his eyes at the reply that Peter couldn't make out. A move which was particularly impressive given the size of his eyes, his tiny pupils looked like marbles rolling inexorably across vast empty chambers. "Yes, Caliban promises that he will not go out again today."
He looked Peter directly in the eyes and tilted his head in a clearly questioning expression. Prominent ridges over his eyes shifted under the beanie, giving the impression of raised brows.
Peter sighed, rolled his own eyes, and nodded.
Caliban grinned under the scarf, his eyes narrowing as gaunt cheeks shifted to accommodate the expression. "It is not just me."
The voice on the other end hissed some more and Caliban nodded. "Yes. He is around five feet in front of me."
"What's-" Peter began to ask, but there was a noise like a bundle of rubber bands stretched taut had suddenly been plucked. A discordant TWANG noise that Peter could feel down to his bones.
Then everything lurched.
Suddenly he was warm and the smell shifted from the biting New York air, to a damp, organic scent. Earthy, but not unpleasantly so, like freshly turned soil. . His vision wavered, but he could still see Caliban blurring in and out of view smiling at him.
"This is the Alley."
Peter caught his balance after a second and straightened up. They were in some kind of massive, gray, stone tunnel. It was easily a hundred feet wide by Peter's estimate and arched into a rounded ceiling that was lost to the darkness overhead.
What light there was, was being provided by candles and lanterns in a few widely separated places. The walls had all sorts of piping running along it. Nothing obviously labeled, but built flush against the stone. Close to the tunnel walls were makeshift structures. Hovels built from whatever scavenged materials could be gotten at hand off the streets of Manhattan. Wood pallet frames, cardboard, corrugated steel, vinyl siding. It seemed like if it could be acquired on the street, someone here had put it to use. The structures were ramshackle little homes that gave some degree of privacy of the 'better than nothing' variety. Peter could see some strange incongruities like one shack that was apparently mostly draped sheets on a wooden frame, but had an elaborate Victorian styled door with beautifully decorated glass inserts. That was right next to a hovel made of sheetrock whose doorway was only covered up by a beaded curtain.
Beyond the earthy smell that was evident, Peter could pick up a strong scent of bodies and a subtler undertone of accumulated rot and garbage. There was a subtle wind through the area. All the candles flickered in a single direction, pointing to a high likelihood that there was some kind of ventilation to the place that kept the air down here from going stagnant.
Peter was certain this was a 'down'. There was a feel of oppressive weight to the whole structure. Not like being in a building. This had been dug in.
He hadn't relaxed even as he'd taken the place in.
"Where is this?" Peter asked, his voice sharp.
Caliban smiled, tugging his beanie off and unwinding his scarf, revealing a fully bald scalp that confirmed he was the same pale color all the way through. "The Alley, Caliban said. It is still in Manhattan."
Peter looked around and said in a low, awed voice. "Didn't think they had stuff like this in Manhattan."
He stiffened once more as that subtle pressure of being prey weighed down on him and he glanced behind him to see a woman approaching. He guessed she'd come out of one of the structures.
Once upon a time, she had been beautiful. Peter could tell that much. Her features were fine and she moved with a lithe grace, but beauty had been in a long forgotten past. Her hair was a lank mess that had probably been hacked short with a knife. Her left eye had a scar running through it from brow to cheek and seemed to burn with a furious intensity. Her right eye was covered with an eyepatch. Her skin was tanned and leathery, showing a lot of hard living.
She wore a tanktop that had practically been worn down to shreds and whatever decency she had was mostly a function of the leather vest she wore on top of it. Her arms were covered in a fine network of scars. Someone who had seen a lot of fighting. Her pants were a pair of low-rise, denim jeans that were tucked into a pair of heavy leather work boots. To accessorize, she'd worn a pair of studded leather bracelets and what looked like a spiked dog collar. Around her waist a metal chain was looped… leash to the dog collar she was wearing?
Everything about her radiated menace and power. A month ago, Peter would have crossed the street to avoid running into her.
Now, though? He was less than impressed.
Her voice was rough, but fit her. A voice built for snapping out angry commands and angrier war cries.
"Manhattan is built on Manhattan," The woman said. "There's parts of the city that were dug out for use, but later forgotten. The Alley is a Cold War Era bunker that was originally meant to be a place of refuge for New York's elite and powerful. It's connected to the storm sewers and the subways in secret paths all across the four boroughs, so the unwashed masses couldn't get in if they didn't know the secret handshake."
Peter nodded politely. "You'd think more people would know about that kind of thing."
She simply shrugged. "Public records get lost. People forget things… or they can be made to forget. Now we're the only ones who know about it. And most of us only know an entrance or two. No one's mapped out the whole network, but if you know your way around, you can travel all across new York and never see the light of day once."
She gave Peter a smile. Feral. Dangerous. That feeling of prey loomed harder.
"I'm Callisto. I lead those who live down here."
"We are Morlocks!" Caliban declared proudly and Peter noted a long suffering look in Callisto's eye at the words.
"That's what some of us have chosen to call ourselves, yes," Callisto replied.
"The underground dwelling cannibals from H.G. Wells Time Machine novel." Peter pressed.
"It's a name." Callisto said, giving that shrug once more. Studied indifference. She gave Caliban a look. "Bouncer told me you'd called and were bringing someone, so I came to check."
"Yes! Caliban found someone else like us!" Caliban replied, gesturing animatedly towards Peter.
Callisto's eye narrowed thoughtfully. "Is he now?"
Peter held his hands up. "All he told me was that he had a nice, warm place with friends. I didn't know anything else besides that when I followed him."
Callisto replied, her voice carrying conviction, "We're runaways, outcasts -- People with no home and no one to care for them. Hated and hunted because of powers we didn't want or understand. Deformed, despised, deserted. I can tell that you know what that's like. If Caliban found you then you're like us."
"Living down here?" Peter asked skeptically.
"There's a short trial period. See if you fit in," Callisto replied, tone going once more to studied indifference.
"And if I don't?" He pried.
Callisto's grin was feral once more. "Then you go back to where you were before and life goes on."
Caliban waved a hand towards Callisto, "No, no. No need to be like that. He'll fit in fine! Caliban thinks he'll do well."
Callisto eyed Peter, then gave Caliban a glare. "We'll see. Find him a place to bunk down and show him around in the morning. It's late and some of us need to sleep."
"Yes, Callisto! Caliban will show him- uh…" He looked helplessly towards Peter. "What do you wish to be called?"
Peter blinked in surprise, caught flatfooted and unsure how to answer the question. He almost blurted his real name, but caught himself and glanced at first one, then the other. He didn't need to give it. In fact, it would be a bit odd, wouldn't it, given how literary their naming choices had been.
Callisto, the name of a woman from Greek mythology who had been turned into a bear by Zeus.
Caliban, the misshapen creature from the Shakespere play The Tempest.
Morlocks.
Peter wracked his brain for any kind of literary reference he could introduce himself to people with. The first thought that had popped into mind was a book he had loved as a child, but he knew he would be laughed out of the alley if he tried to introduce himself as 'Bambi'. 'Old Yeller' was similarly off the table.
He sighed.
"It's not that difficult a question." Callisto said, amusement clear in her tone.
He was irked by that, but he was trying to fit in. The streets had been lonely. He hadn't ever really been a people person most of his life, but that was largely because people sucked and he'd never had people like him to try and fit in with.
When he'd run away, he hadn't imagined that loneliness would be what would gnaw away at him. The boredom. The isolation.
He wanted to be one of them. He scoffed mentally. He didn't even know what they were or how they would be and he was already trying to fit in with all of them. One of him.
All for One. One for all… hmm.
He blinked as he realized that worked both as a name and would probably be sufficiently literary for this place.
"Dumas." Peter declared finally.
"Dumb ass?" Caliban asked, mispronouncing it badly.
Peter winced, even as Callisto laughed.
"Dumas, then." Callisto greeted him with a degree of formality. "Welcome to the Alley."
- - -